Be sure to include your name, daytime phone number, address, name and phone number of legal next-of-kin, method of payment, and the name of the funeral home/crematory to contact for verification of death.

The Feb. 10 murders of three young people in Chapel Hill seemed another spasm of American gun violence. But soon there was a strong national, even global assertion that this view ignores the real cause.

Heidi Carter, Durham's school board chairman, pushes to improve the school system in the face of state policies and local choices that make it harder to break the link between poverty and low achievement.

The Rev. William Barber is leading protests against Republican extremists. They, in turn, say he is out of step with the will of the voters. Now the challenge for both will be to find North Carolina’s true center.

State leaders say their tax and spending cuts are spurring North Carolina's economy, but other numbers show weak job growth, a shrinking labor force and insufficient spending on the state's basic needs.

Gov. Pat McCrory should have admitted his mistake in the timing and disclosure of a special payment for his services on a mortgage broker’s board. Instead, he’s attacking the accuracy of the report that made the situation public.

There’s irony, or perhaps wishful thinking, in calling this region the Triangle. It implies a coherent, unified place. In reality, it’s a crazy quilt of counties and municipalities that have overlapping needs and concerns but lack any regional authority that can compel them to act in the region’s wider interests.

A lawsuit filed against UNC by former football player Michael McAdoo could shine light on how athletes were steered to sham classes and raise questions about whether the exchange between revenue sport athletes and their schools is fair.

Dr. Aldona Wos, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, no doubt saw some impressive recoveries when she was a practicing physician, but none can compare with the miracle cure she has overseen as a government official. She’s fixed Medicaid.

The Wainstein investigation produced a deep and revealing report, but it’s a stretch to confine the primary blame for the UNC scandal to two people who worked in the African and Afro-American American Studies department.

Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission says the kind of anonymous money flooding North Carolina’s US Senate race is hurting the democratic process and making it hard for ordinary people to be heard.

The Affordable Care Act didn’t get much of a celebration for its one-year anniversary Oct. 1. Democratic politicians, as is their skittish style these days, tended to ignore the occasion. But, tellingly, so did their Republican counterparts.